Just as Windows is the dominant presence on the operating system market while Linux is the underdog, so Microsoft is search leader in enterprise environments, while Google is but a challenger. As of the end of September 2008, market analysis firm Gartner placed Microsoft at the top of the enterprise search food chain in the “Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology”. At this point in time, the enterprise search providers are sharing a market worth $860.3 million in 2007, but that Gartner estimates will almost double, growing to $1.5 billion by 2012.

“Microsoft is now leader in enterprise search with its solution spanning Search Server Express, SharePoint and FAST ESP,” revealed Philippe Destoop, the Enterprise Architect for the Belgian and Luxembourg Developer and Platform Group of Microsoft. The Redmond giant ensured its dominant position among the players on the enterprise search market with a $1.2 billion investment which went in 2008 for the acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer.

“Microsoft acquired Fast Search & Transfer, a Norwegian information access leader, in a major transaction with far-reaching ramifications. In some cases, consolidation eliminates software and ultimately forces clients to shift to new packages; for example, when Autonomy acquired Verity, it started moving clients to its own software; Fast Search & Transfer did the same when it bought AltaVista and later Convera's enterprise business. In other cases, the impact is lesser - Microsoft, for instance, is maintaining Fast Search & Transfer's software and has even pledged a commitment to support it on Linux,” revealed Gartner's Whit Andrews and Rita E. Knox.

Gartner indicated that Microsoft's advantages on the enterprise search market are the comprehensive and extensive customization capabilities of its products, strong support, the capability to index a wide variety of content sources, and the streamlined handling of multi-terabyte data volumes. By contrast, Google's weak points are the lack of investment in increasing customization, its failure to tailor the product to specific users, and an overall consumer-focused strategy.